Top critical review

This is a bit like a curates egg,there are some good bits in this book.Unfortunately you have to go through pages of irrelevant information to get to it.There are chapters on politics in the 1920s,the Great Strike and India.I do not accept that these are at all relevant to the topic.The cover is misleading as it is not what it seems.There are far better books about the fascist movement in the 1930s eg the biog of William Joyce.

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This book starts with Prussian troops circling Paris in 1870. The author then painstakingly covers the development of British politics up to 1939, putting the blackshirts, and other movements, in historical context. It is therefore somewhat thin on detail of the blackshirt movement, but is innovative in doing what the author sets out to do: show that the BUF was a logical progression of the political trends of the time, not, as many other supposedly authoritative books often present it, a baffling fluke of political history. In that objective it is successful. For detailed information about the movements themselves, this is perhaps not the book to read. It's not badly written, just badly promoted (like the title, for example).

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This is a bit like a curates egg,there are some good bits in this book.Unfortunately you have to go through pages of irrelevant information to get to it.There are chapters on politics in the 1920s,the Great Strike and India.I do not accept that these are at all relevant to the topic.The cover is misleading as it is not what it seems.There are far better books about the fascist movement in the 1930s eg the biog of William Joyce.

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Generally, this is a readable and informative piece of social and political history, with the author succeeding in placing the disinct phenomenon of British fascism within its wider context. Thus, we are always made aware of the more general party political, economic and international climate, giving us an appreciation of how the British strain of fascism

was rooted within a set of distinct historical circumstances. Sometimes, the book relies on lists to overwhelm us with information: which members of the great and the great supported (overtly or covertly) Moseley's causes at various points in time are often inserted in the text and interrupt the narrative flow. Overall, an interesting read and would be read profitably alongside the authoritative biographies of Moseley (i.e. those by Robert Skidelsky or Stephen Dorril). Also will appeal to those with a general interest in Britain's turbulent post-war years.

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It is perhaps hard to credit that in the late 19th century supposedly at the height of Britain's imperial might, there was such anxiety about decline and the state of the nation, the industrial challenge from Germany and the USA, the naval building programme that Tirpitz had initiated and the poor performance in the Boer War that Churchill made a comment to Asquith that 'Germany is prepared for war and prepared for peace, Britain is only prepared for party politics.'

The tragedy and human cost of WW1, together with the political corruption of Lloyd George; seeming betrayal of the soldiers returning from the war; fear of the Bolshevik threat transferring itself and continual industrial unrest, some 86 million days were lost to strikes in 1921 alone meant that for some an alternative to the decaying and debased parliamentary system had to be found. Italian Fascism seemed to offer one option. A combination of patriotism, corporatism and socialism. It offered to some people in the Conservative party a panacea. At this period of course large elements within the party viewed industrial capitalism as a ruination of traditional conservative values that were primarily attached to the land and a hierarchical/monarchical structure.

At first Martin Pugh's book reads like a collection of semi-imperialist oddballs, female cross-dressers trying to hang on to the independence they found in the first world war and odd groups and journals that had a similar readership to those ultra-nationalist elements in late 19th century Germany, who did so much to push the country on a path to confrontation with Britain. It is when Oswald Mosley appears that you get some sense of direction and purpose.

Mosley is an interesting character. An aristocrat who represented both Tory and Labour seats; a soldier during the war who appealed to men from a similar background and a consummate public speaker. There is no doubting Mosley's sincerity and his contempt for parliamentary process which was shared by many. The Unity party that also attracted the likes of Harold Nicolson and the British Union of Fascists took their inspiration from Italy and Mussolini. Mosley knew that he was unlikely to achieve success directly through the ballot box and as Mussolini did and Hitler was to do subsequently was looking for a crisis of democracy to push himself forward as a leader figure, using his aristocratic links and political sympathisers. That this did not occur is probably down to two things. The British are intellectually lazy and from the time of Cromwell onward have also had a loathing of arbitrary authority, although funnily enough they are still attracted to the monarchical version of it. The second reason is that the depression never caused the same ravages to the economy and levels of unemployment that were so prevalent in the USA and Germany. In fact the oft cited case of the Jarrow marchers was something of an aberration in the context of a growing economy, so this crisis that Mosley was looking for did not materialise.

The high water mark for the BUF was the Olympia rally of 1934. Mosley had considerable support in some sections of the press and with some members of the Conservative party including members of parliament. It is hard though to see how far he and his acolytes regardless of their sometimes exalted positions managed to penetrate beyond this. The same figures appear and re-appear across a number of groupings and do not become more convincing with the passing. The fact is that the upper echelons of the Conservative party detested Mosley because he was drawing votes away from them, particularly in agricultural areas where the BUF campaigned hard. The 1934 rally that had been targeted by socialist plants in the audience and the subsequent physical ejections by BUF stewards (most political parties employed their own stewards and this was allowed by law. Political rally's at this point were rather more violent than we appreciate and would certainly shock many people today), gave the Conservative press an opportunity to attack the BUF, and with threats from advertisers, newspaper support fell away. Support waxed and waned throughout the pre-war period, only achieving a level of resurgence with the middle-class peace movement in the late thirties when war seemed inevitable.

Most fascist movements have attracted anti-semites, and this is one of its defining failures, Mosley himself initially had no interest in anti jewish racism, but absorbed it reluctantly when its obvious popularity boosted membership. Most anti-semitism at this time was linked to Bolshevism and international finance, opposite ends of the spectrum perhaps, but no different to what the opinion of many Germans was towards Britain and the City of London was in the late 19th century.

Two other interesting aspects of this book and the movement are an account of the abdication crisis and the role of women. The abdication crisis was far more of a people versus establishment event than I had appreciated. Edward was popular and both Mosley, Churchill and others actively supported his retention as monarch. He actually wanted to be a more traditional King with real authority and this senior political figures would never countenance. As far as the role of women is concerned the BUF was the opposite to other fascist movements. It actively supported women's roles in the party and put forward more women parliamentary candidate than all the other parties combined. Women were enthusiastic members and campaigned regularly.

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I wasn't very long into this book, a present from a friend, when I found myself making pencilled margin notes. These were at first query marks to check on various people/events etc introduced by Pugh. After a while, reading descriptions like "eccentric and fanatical racist", "a man completely obsessed with the idea of a world conspiracy" and "The Mitford sisters crept about the country lanes ... vainly expecting armed Bolsheviks to spring from every hedge" and so forth I began to weary with it.

This sort of character assassination, sadly often expressed in Sixth-Form "witticism", betrays the real purpose of this book. It is not to offer an impartial account of Mosley/BUF in the historical context (far less to give any "Hurrah") but to hold him/his supporters up to ridicule. It is an opinion, a propagandist attempt at re-assuring his readership that after all, the good guys won in 1930's Britain. Finally after repeated tries had to give up on it. I allotted two rather than one stars for the wealth of detail presented by Pugh, but his manner of presentation is unworthy of real scholarship.